trying to figure it all out in my thirties…through yoga, running, books, travel and just living life

Marathon Training Week Eleven

The eagle-eyed amongst you will be asking “week eleven, what happened to week ten?”. The world’s worst cold, that’s what happened! Cue an 11-day hiatus from running – well, actually there was a 4-day hiatus from everything and then it took another week or so for me to stop sounding like I was smoking 60 a day!

This came at a pretty bad time for my training – I was about to run the furthest I had ever run before (15 miles) and we are now only 6 weeks or so from race day so there isn’t much time to make it up. Still, I really do believe it was worth taking the time to recover properly so hopefully I will be back to full fitness quickly. Even this 3 mile jog was pretty hard work for a delicate chest – turns out coughing and running at the same time is pretty tricky and rather intense work on the abs.

At this point, I am not feeling at all confident about the marathon. I started out with an (unrealistic) intention to run sub-4 hours, based on a couple of sub-2 hours half-marathons. Right now, I will just be happy to finish! 26.2 miles feels like such a long way and I am really questioning my sanity about signing up. Maybe this is a normal part of the process and getting ill is just one of those things. I just hate not doing things well or not achieving my goals. I know this all totally arbitrary and nothing bad will happen if I decided to ‘only’ do the half-marathon or if I run in 5 hours rather than 4 but that is completely besides the point! Argh!

For now, I’m just trying to focus on getting the miles in. I’m really looking forward to a group run in early May (some of the Uganda Marathon crew are getting together to do a 20 mile training run) – I’m hoping that spending time with the other runners and making some new friends will help lift my spirits. In the meantime, if anyone has any tips or advice, I’m all ears!

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3 thoughts on “Marathon Training Week Eleven”

Vix, I set out to complete my first marathon and my goal was just to complete it, I didn’t set a time and finished in 5hrs 5mins. My next aim was to be beat 5 hrs and due to knowing more about the run I completed it in 4hrs 25mins and that was it until someone said I could probably get down to 4 hours. I then did my 3rd marathon with that being the aim and a steady well timed pace all the way round had me finishing in 3hrs 59mins and 54seconds. Job done. It may not sound appealing at the moment, but use your first one to learn from and then set your goals for a second one. Finally, I was very lucky to have a training partner for the first two runs and she ensured my training was carried out and fun to do. All the best, JJ

Thanks JJ. At this point, I can’t imagine ever wanting to do this again but we’ll see. I was watching Mind Over Marathon last night and realised that this is about the journey and the adventure, the race is just one little part of that, enjoying the ride is the most important goal